Swindon counts as travel doesn’t it? I mean I had to get on three separate trains to get there so I’m going to deem it blog-worthy. Also I won’t be doing anything as exciting as this again this year and it’s been a while since I last blogged, so here we are.
I recently changed jobs and I work for the MOD now. I can’t say much about what I do but I can tell you a bit about a course I’ve just been on. The idea behind it was to give civil servants whose jobs have a direct effect on military personnel a better understanding of military life and it was 100% the best work related experience I’ve ever had (and I have been on a hell of a lot of courses).
We were based at the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom in Wiltshire but we got to visit some other places too. On day 1 we learned about explosives and saw a lot of things getting blown up and we even got to make our own IED’s (terrifyingly easy) - despite a lot of the course being lecture based, this was definitely going to be something different! We also got to check out loads of tanks at the tech school, I climbed on them but didn’t go inside since I’m not the biggest fan of confined spaces.
On day 2 we visited RAF stations and got to see fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. Although I’ve seen military planes in museums in the US, it was very cool to actually get to go inside ones that are in active use. We also got to hear from a guy whose entire job is working out how to parachute equipment out of planes, everything from food supplies to boats (sorry, no photos as there was some prototype equipment in the hanger). What a sweet job though!
The rest of week one was an exercise where we got to live in the field at the Infantry Battle School in Brecon, (Here’s their page on the army website: https://www.army.mod.uk/who-we-are/our-schools-and-colleges/infantry-battle-school/ ) hilariously entitled “Exercise Civil Strife” (yes, really). This was the army part of the course, although because the instructors were army officers we had to call it the “land environment” because all the forces serve in the land environment at some point and they didn’t want to be seen to be over-emphasising the army stuff.
Now we all know I love Wales but what I do not love is camping, dirt and portaloos. To say I was apprehensive about this part of the course would be an understatement. I didn’t want to get shouted at by a man in a beret, I didn’t want to sleep in a field and I didn’t want to carry a bag that was bigger than I was for any significant distance. It actually turned out to be one of the most affirming experiences I’ve had in a long time (and not a single person shouted at me!)
Before we left we were issued with kit, my trousers were so big that I’m pretty sure I could have comfortably invited another person to join me in them. Unlike becoming a flight attendant, there is no height restriction for joining the British Army, but lets just say that they don’t really cater for the little people. It’s a good thing we didn’t have to parade because I would have been a shambles. The rucksack (they call it a bergan, I know all the lingo now) that you have to wear is massive and heavy, plus you have a rifle and webbing which is like a utility belt with a load of detachable pockets for important stuff like your ammunition, water bottle and “luxury snack items” (I made sure all luxury snack items were easily accessible at all times). When I was in NZ I helped one of my friends pack to leave once and tried her rucksack on to see how heavy it was, I nearly fell over then and this was worse (it was also only about a third of the weight that real soldiers carry).
So, off we went to hell or Wales, or whatever you want to call it (at this point I was still convinced I was facing my final days on earth). When we got there we were issued with our rifles and shown how to use them (I forgot immediately and had to be shown again multiple times, hello dyslexic brain freeze, my old friend). Manny, the real live Gurkha soldier who was teaching us was patience personified (I mean the instructors we had from day 1 of the course are real live soldiers too, but, as will become clear later, they are basically teddy bears in camouflage, some of the IBS instructors looked like they would kill you for insubordination). I guess even if the they are giving you blank ammunition, they want to be 100% sure you aren't going to screw up with a massive great gun.
We’d been divided into three squadrons (lingo again there, you see!) and I was in 2 Section which was of course the best one. Pics of us above are just before getting on the transport trucks to go out and immediately after completing the assault course on the last day.
The trucks were where it all got quite real. You sit in them sideways and the back is open so you can just awkwardly stare out at the normal traffic - normal people going to their nice warm houses rather than to a wet, cold field. It was also both dark and fully raining (”If it’s not raining - it’s not training!”) by the time we left the training centre so it was quite disorientating. It was about a 40 minute journey too, because you have to go right into the centre of the MOD land area where there are no other civilians for you to casually walk away back to civilisation with.
We were dumped out of the trucks and shown where we were sleeping, which was the floor of a barn, so super comfortable and welcoming. The rest of the night was lessons on camouflage, how to cook rations, using flares, patrolling with night vision goggles (very cool) and heat sensors (also cool, but we only got to have a quick look at these since they cost 17 grand each so we weren't going to be trusted with them for long).
Although we were able to try the rations (my favourite was the fruit explosion, the texture of which was a mix between a smoothie and baby food, but legitimately delicious) we were actually fed fresh food because, being delicate civil servants, our myriad dietary requirements were more than army rations could cope with. My vegan pasta and “meatballs” was surprisingly good.
Now of course in the army, you can’t just sleep because who knows when an enemy combatant might attack you. Someone has to be patrolling all night. I was on second watch which ended up being first watch because we went to bed later than planned and frankly I think I totally lucked out. My partner and I had a very relaxed time watching the stars and enjoying the snow (thanks Wales, another of my favourite things) that gently began to fall on us five minutes in. Despite my frankly, jammy skill at getting the best stag (LINGO) and therefore not having to get up in the night, I didn’t get any sleep at all, discomfort, snorers and my general inability to sleep anywhere other than my own bed meant that 5am couldn’t come soon enough.
Being up before dawn generally puts me in a bad mood and realising that they hadn’t brought my vegan breakfast could have tipped me over the edge, but watching one officer jovially berating another in a Malcom Tucker-esque display of colourful language for forgetting it couldn’t fail to make me smile. When he said; “I’ve got fruit in me car, sweetheart, will a bit of fruit do you for now?” and then pulled out a pear and two bananas, I was thrilled, after all, English pears are in season right right now and I do love a pear (and yes Mum, I ate it un-sliced and un-peeled, because that’s what soldiers do).
Our first night accommodation had been luxurious compared to what we would have on night two and in anticipation of this we practised putting up our “bashers” (LINGO) - literally like tarpaulin sheets to keep the rain off you while you sleep on the ground. Thankfully there wasn’t much time to dwell on this fresh hell as the rest of the morning (and mornings are long if you get up at 5am) was rifle drill where we had to practice attacking and retreating from a firefight. This was actually really fun. We leaned hand signals and there was a lot of running and firing and jumping up and down. I also discovered that getting down on the floor and shooting from the ground is all fine and dandy until you have to get up again while wearing the webbing and the backpack and not dropping the rifle, run forward a few paces and then repeat the whole task again ad-infitum. I’ll just say it was a sweet-ass core muscle workout and I’m glad that there was a brief break in the rain for this activity.
After lunch we got to meet the SAS. Now, you know they’re the SAS because it’s bitter cold and they are in t-shirts. I’ve met a lot of people in my life but I think this is the first time I’ve ever met anyone whose specialist skill set includes bayoneting people in the face (although idk, some of you may be hiding your light under a bushel, let me know). I want to say here and now that I enjoyed the SAS part. We learned a lot of cool survival stuff and it was really interesting. I did take issue with some of the chicken murder though.
So, the SAS guy shows us how to kill, skin and cook a chicken. I was fine with that. It was clean and quick and I am interested in biology, so seeing the inside of the chicken (including a fully intact egg she was just about to lay) was a legitimate learning experience. Now they had 20 chickens in a cage which made me uncomfortable because of course the next part was “who wants to have a go at killing a chicken?” I understand that nobody is going to be good at something the first time they try it, even SAS man probably killed his first couple of chickens badly when he started doing it at age 3 or whatever, but I was not massively excited at butchery amateur hour. The chickens in the cage had obviously just seen what had happened to their friend so understandably, they were not excited either. When I was in NZ I looked after a few chickens so I quite like them and I know a little bit about them. There was one thing I didn’t realise about chickens who know they are about to die though.
Now I may have been projecting, but to me they sounded like people screaming and I really was not in any way prepared to listen to that, so I noped out of there pretty quick. I absented myself from the rest of the cooking part and came back to listen to the rest of the survival stuff. I talked to people about it afterwards and I don’t feel like I missed anything important.
I like to think that in general I am a pretty tough and resilient person, but I did have to spend a bit of time reflecting on that experience. I talked to one of the instructors who helped me see that there is nothing wrong in taking the time to explore feelings that you didn’t expect to have about something. I certainly didn’t anticipate having such a strong reaction and I think those little chickens taught me something important about myself, something I never expected to take away from this course. Heavy stuff for a light-hearted blogger.
Another night of zero sleep, howling wind and rain meant that after 5am reveille (LINGO), my 7am date with the assault course came after being awake for 50 hours. When I got up to walk to the loo I realised I felt drunk and I was weaving around, I also couldn’t see properly and had no depth perception. I’ve been awake for over 40 hours before when flying long-haul but all I had to do was move from plane to plane, not really achieve anything. When I told the Lieutenant-Colonel how I was feeling he smiled and said; “Oh yeah, that’s exactly what sleep deprivation does to you” at least someone was enjoying themselves.
We were told the assault course was 800 meters away. That was a lie. People had fitbits, we totally checked, it was a long way away. Whatever, I thought, if I’m gonna go down here, I’m gonna go down fighting, (I guess all that camo was really rubbing off on me). Now the assault course was the first place where there was any shouting, apparently the PT instructors didn’t get the memo about being nice. I’m not going to lie, I was worn out after the warm up and then we had to run the length of the course so they could show us each exercise. The concept of a glacial pace is completely alien to the infantry.
Now this is a proper assault course that the proper infantry do and have to pass as part of their proper training. We were allowed to skip an exercise if we really felt we couldn’t do it but there wasn’t really anything you could do in a half-assed way. Go hard or go home (or go and wait next to the trucks with the injured people at least). I admit I was intimidated. I’m pretty fit but remember I couldn’t see properly, I felt rough as toast and as I said before the army don’t really accommodate little people. There were ladders with rungs so far apart that there was no way I could physically climb them without assistance because I simply didn’t have the leg span to do it. We also weren't in our sections but had been split into random smaller teams so I didn’t know all the people in my group that well.
With a huge amount of support from everyone in my group, I got through and I completed almost every obstacle. There was only one thing I didn’t do. It was a kind of fireman’s pole type thing that was at a 45 degree angle. I climbed the insanely wide rung-ed ladder up to it, I crossed the rope bridge over to it (no problem, I’m pretty good at rope bridges) I sat down to get my arms and legs on the pole. I was fine with my arms but I struggled to get my teeny little legs into the right position, I just about got my feet on there, just barely. I asked the instructor if that would be enough because I didn’t feel like I had a safe enough grip with my feet. He said I’d be fine as long as I kept them steady and kept my arms wrapped around the pole exactly as I had them. Now there are two of each exercise so there is always someone opposite you doing the same thing and at this point the guy opposite me fell from the same position I was in. He was perfectly fine but he screamed a lot and the sound of him hitting the ground was pretty nasty. I don’t think it was actually a bad fall but from where I was sitting it looked horrible. Back across the rope bridge, back down the ladder (my teammate having to climb back up to help me down). Know your limits. I carried on and completed every other obstacle.
I’ve completed assault courses before (I did PGL twice mate, I’m no slouch) but what I managed to achieve there was pretty impressive. I’m naturally pretty lazy, if I don’t want to do something, I don’t do it. The LC had said before that I’d be amazed at what my body could do if I just pushed it and he was right. I have no desire to go through that experience ever again, but I learned something very important about my endurance levels. I don’t actually surprise myself very often but I did there and I got a lot of praise for it that made me feel warm and fuzzy.
Back on the trucks, back to civilisation (well as civilised as IBS training centre gets, flushing toilets and running water) we hand our kit back and I’m cleaning my rifle and the LC said; “Do you feel like a rock star now?” I looked up at him and said; “At the tail end of a world tour that’s gone on 15 cities too long, worn out after too much coke and too many groupies, yeah maybe that kind of rock star”.
Coach back to Swindon, train back to London for the weekend. My bed has never been more welcome but that was a hell of an experience to have at work (and just think of all the flexi-time I accrued by never going to sleep!).
Week 2 was never going to quite match up to week 1 but it was still pretty cool. Lectures on days 1, 4 and 5 and a trip to a naval base on days 2 and 3. Now if you’re going to live in an officers’ mess, do it with the Royal Navy because those kids know how to live. The food was amazing, the apple crumble was VEGAN and DELIGHTFUL. We got to look around some ships and meet a lot of sailors, we got to see their training set up where they simulate a flood on a ship (HMS Chaos, because of course) and fires on ships, we got to see them train for ship to ship refuelling (If you’ve been watching the programme about the HMS Queen Elizabeth on BBC 2 recently, this is what they did during the hurricane in the second episode). We also got to hang out in the bar with a pretty fun group of naval officers (I low key fell in love with one for a minute but I quickly got over it).
Day 4 was all about the realities of war and we heard from a captain who almost lost his ship (The tagline of his presentation was: “NOBODY DIED”), a woman who lost her partner in Iraq and from survivors of physical and mental injuries, it was heavy and hard to listen to at times, but important. Also, the chefs who made our lunch were bold enough to put ratatouille on a stick and I have to say that the ratatouille and aubergine skewers were top notch.
I can say without a doubt that this was the best work course I’ve ever been on. Despite what I said four paragraphs ago about the assault course, I’d do the whole two weeks again in a heartbeat (with the caveat of some sleep and no chickens in Brecon). I was pushed and I learned a lot and I feel incredibly blessed to have had this opportunity (This course runs twice a year and only certain people get to go on it, the majority of people on the leadership scheme I’m on will never get the chance to do it).
In the bar on the final night of the course one of the instructors told me he was proud of me. I’m not going to tell you exactly what he said. I doubt I’ll ever tell anyone because it was private and a little bit emotional and it might have made a teeny little crack in my cold, stone heart but I’ll share one bit of it (apologies for the language); “I know you felt like shit, but you put your fucking helmet on your head and walked over there and you smashed every single fucking obstacle on that assault course. Never let yourself believe that you can’t do anything”.
If you’ve read all the way through my longest ever blog post, good for you, you’re nearly as bad-ass as I am and remember, I’m the kind of bitch that can impress soldiers.
